What San Diego officials will do — or not — with the nation’s worst lead-polluting airport

Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport is the highest lead-polluting general aviation airport in the U.S., and no targeted testing is being done for the toxic substance in the San Diego neighborhoods nearby.

An inewsource investigation this month revealed that the highest lead-polluting general aviation airport in the U.S. is in San Diego, the city-owned Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport.

To follow up, inewsource has asked a range of officials what can be done to change that.

Two years ago, Mayor Todd Gloria and others rolled out an unleaded fuel program for the airport’s piston engine planes. Since then, only 168 gallons of UL 94 have been sold at the airport compared with nearly 1.5 million gallons of leaded fuel, a nearly 9,000-fold difference.

A large portion of traffic at the airport — known as MYF by the Federal Aviation Administration — consists of flight training operations run by private companies whose planes could mostly run on the unleaded option.